Thursday, 31 December 2015

I cannot believe that tomorrow it will no longer be 2015. This year feels like it's flown by! It's been a very tough year for me with my depression and anxiety being at an all time high, but because of this all of the events of past twelve months feel to me like such big accommplishments and I wanted to bring them all together in one post to help me remember that I am a strong person, no matter how bad I feel sometimes, and that it's important for me to focus on all of the positive things in my life instead of the negativity that invisible illness can bring with it. I hope you all enjoying reading this post. Happy New Year for tomorrow :)

♥Manchester Comic Con ♥

Going to my first ever Comic Con event in July was definitely one of the greatest times of the year for me. I've forever been fascinated by cosplay, and the idea of transforming yourself into one of your favourite characters for a day. I am always amazed by the creativity and amount of effort that goes into designing and handmaking the costumes and all of the accessories, especially huge elaborate weapons. I'm a big kid! I'm like the girl equivalent of Peter Pan and I love fancy dress! Up until Comic Con I'd only dressed up for themed nights out at uni so it was an awesome experience. I loved being surrounded by so many people with similar interests and it was kind of surreal seeing robots and other fantastic characters from movies, comics and anime/manga walking past me. Plus, all of the stalls there were just great. I spent alot of money and came home very happy. I challenged myself to go to a place that I knew would be heaving with people and was proud of myself. I cannot wait for next year.

♥Awesome university memories♥

I didn't go out as much as I did in my 1st & 2nd years of uni because with it being my final year, I had a massive amount of work to complete, including the dreaded dissertation. I did still go on a few fantastic nights out and had lots of fun! We have a bar on my campus that organised themed events for special occassions of the year. Every Valentine's Day, they host an event called 'Kinky Brack' which was great as usual, and I also went to a 'Cops & Robbers' event. Some of my best memories spent with my friends drinking and having a good laugh was at my friend's birthday party in January. We ordered chinese takeaway and had a flat party; I had a fabulous time. I love a good night out, but I realised how much I prefered parties in the comfort of my own flat. The highlights of my third year are all of the little things that I really miss now that I've graduated, such as sitting in the kitchen with my flatmates and chatting about so many different things, playing playstation games and watching TV shows together. I really miss that there was always someone to chat to, even in the early hours of morning. I'm a natural night owl who also happens to have a lot of sleeping problems so it was fantastic to have something to do at night. Me and my friends often stayed in the library on campus until 2am writing our dissertations #topstudents. At the end of the academic year once our dissertations had been handed in, we had some BBQs which were great and I had lots of time to go walking with my camera in hand. Summer Ball was amazing. The huge white gazebo they set up on campus was so pretty inside and everyone looked great in their suites and dresses. Such a brilliant way to end university.

♥Completing my dissertation♥

I was so proud of myself the moment I received three professionally binded copies of my completed dissertation standing in a small printing shop in Newark, Nottingham with my friends. It was such a relief to have finally finished it as it symbolised all the hard work I'd put into my entire degree for the last three years. It caused months of crying episodes, almost emotional breakdowns and sleepless nights to get it finished and it felt great to look at the 10,000 words I managed to pull from my brain, whilst struggling to write all the assignments for my other modules. To anyone else who is currently writing or is about to write their own dissertation, keep up the hard work and try not to stress too much over it :) it will all be worth it in the end. Good luck!

♥ Nature Photography♥

One of my hobbies is taking photographs of beautiful things I see outside: flowers, birds, insects, trees, I love the natural world. It's gorgeous and I enjoy capturing moments when I see something beautiful so I can remember it forever. This year, I didn't go out as much as I used to and I had no motivation to do things, but I tried really hard to go on walks whenever I could and take photos to remind myself no matter how much I get disheartened with the world, there is so much beauty in it. I was really over the moon when I managed to get a photo of a Peregrine Falcon sitting on top of the accommodation building across from mine, and a photograph of an orange-tip butterfly with it's wings open which I was a challenge for me being short (I'm 5''2 haha) and it being on top of a tall bush.

♥ Cats the Musical ♥

I have been a huge fan of this musical since I was around 7 years old and it kickstarted my love of all musicals. I was so thrilled that I finally got the opportunity to see it in July this year at the Blackpool Opera House. It was absolutely AMAZING! Fantastic stage design, fabulous costumes, exceptional make-up and breathtaking voices! I managed to get some great seats on the right side of the room... the people who were supposed to sit in the front row didn't turn up and since we were in the second row that meant we were then at the front! Our seats were situated in front of the steps leading onto the stage so the cast would walk right by us, which was also amazing because I was on the end of the row so constantly got interacted with. I was pawed on the arm by many cats that night! haha It was my best friend's first musical so it was great that I was able to share that experience with her. I will be going back to see it again without a doubt if they come back to Blackpool or Manchester.

♥ Welcomed a new nephew! ♥

My adorable nephew Steven was born in April this year :) I now have 2 nieces & 2 nephews.

♥ Final year of university & Graduation ♥

Getting to the end of university was my biggest achievement of the year. I was so proud of myself that I'd managed to stay strong and stick it out for three years. I'm a determined person and when I put my mind to something I don't easily give up, but it was such a difficult year and to be honest the whole experience was challenging. As soon as I started university, I also started experiencing the symptoms of chronic illness. I'd had problems all my life leading up to this point but after dealing with depression for almost 2 years before I went to university, it had really taken it's toll on my body and it was impossible to ignore the changes to my health. As a result of the pain and problems caused by IBS and Fibromyalgia, I developed anxiety and over the last three years all of it has gotten worse and worse. This last year, dealing with depression and anxiety has been so tiring, frustrating and emotionally draining and it took all of my strength to do my uni work and revise for my exam but I DID IT! I'll never forget my time at university... I met so many wonderful people, had great fun and was really glad that I moved to somewhere 3 hours away from my hometown despite how terrified I was! The campus I chose was beautiful and I saw so much wildlife whilst studying there, including Great Crested Newts!

Since I was young I wanted to go to university, to prove to myself that I could do it. Throughout high school and college, I was knocked back everytime I tried to work towards getting onto a science degree; my school wouldn't let me take higher science GCSE papers because I wasn't very good at Maths and the local college wouldn't let me take science subjects for AS Levels but I worked around it and ignored people who told me I couldnt do it. I now have a Bachelor of Honours Degree in Zoo Biology, and it makes me feel like sticking my middle finger up to them all and saying look what I did! I'm also glad that I'm a girl who I studied a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) subject and will one day hopefully get a job in my field #girlgang

♥ Starting my blog ♥

I started my blog on 10th September this year with my first post about why I love Autumn. I'm so glad that I decided to just go for it and make a blog. I'd been considering it for a few years and I thought it would be great for me to start as soon as I left uni to give me something to do. I knew that I wouldn't be able to think about working for a while because I'd need to work towards recovery and needed something to keep me occupied at home and to help me focus on all the things that make me happy. I can't believe this will be my 75th post! Blogging has helped me a lot so far. I've met so many lovely people and I appreciate so much that you all take the time to read about my life. I love the amount of support in the blogging world and how open people are about their struggles with mental and physical health. Reading about the experiences of others has been really beneficial for me. Thankyou everyone ♥

Overall, 2015 has been a year of up's and down's. I've had lots of fun times and made some fantastic memories, however it has been a hard year and I hope that 2016 is better!

Tuesday, 29 December 2015

Christmas is over and New Year is on it's way! I've been spending the last few days resting and recuperating from Christmas Day and Boxing Day, colouring illustrations in my new colouring books and pretty much non-stop reading Divergent until the early hours of the morning! Even though I had such a fun time, dealing with the events of Christmas was exhausting on both my physical and mental health. I don't talk about depression much but it makes some days really difficult, and Boxing Day was definitely one of those days. So I'm writing this post to highlight all of the great things about the day and to share with you all how my family spend Boxing Day. What do you do on Boxing Day? Of course, I started the day with a lie in and spent the whole day in my PJs :)

Every year of my life, we have always had a big buffet on Boxing Day. On the days leading up to Christmas, I am more excited for this than Christmas dinner. We use the left-over turkey from the day before to make sandwiches and we have all the delicious nibbles that traditionally go on buffets. As usual, my brothers and my nieces and nephews came over and the house was really hectic! It was nice to listen to my nieces and nephew talk about Father Christmas and all of the presents they'd received. My nieces were thrilled that my mum had bought them each a rainbow alpacasso, because they absolutely love mine :)

This is not even the full buffet! We couldn't fit some of it on our tiny dining room table. Looking at these photos is making me so hungry right now! After stuffing ourselves with food, some of my family played board games and hearing my nephew getting so excited that he won one of the games was so cute! He was telling everyone haha I spent the afternoon editing blog photos, writing up my What I got for Christmaspost and watching movies on TV. So, that's how I spent my Boxing Day!

I forgot to show you all this awesome Christmas present that my mum put together for me. I love it! Knowing me, it will not last as long as it should but I can always re-fill it! Did you get any homemade style presents this year?

Thankyou for reading!

♥

If you've written a post all about how you spent Christmas and/or Boxing Day, please me know :) I love having a good old nosey at what everyone else has been up to.

Saturday, 26 December 2015

I can't believe Christmas is over for another year! I had such a lovely day yesterday and I was very spoilt with all the great presents I received. As I started blogmas a day late, I said I'd also write on Boxing Day :) I hope you all enjoyed my blogmas posts... I'm looking forward to taking part again next year. This post is going to pic heavy. I hope it doesn't come across that I'm showing off or anything, I just really wanted to share my joy and I hope everyone else got wonderful gifts too ♥

How adorable are those Simba slipper socks? The Lion King is my favourite Disney movie. I've wanted these gorgeous TY fox all year, after spotting it when I was out shopping months ago. I'm impressed that my mum remembered that I wanted it. I got the gingerbread man money box from my brother. I'm going to use it next year to save up money for all my friends and familys Christmas presents.

I love my new perfume :) Vera Wang's Be Jeweled was on my Christmas wishlist so I'm really glad I got it. It's a lovely mixture of fruity scents with little floral undertones. I'm not a fan of strong floral perfumes so I'm lovin' this. I was surprised with another perfume. I love Anna Sui! The design of her perfume bottles and the interesting mix of fragrances are great! Another lovely fruity combination: mango, raspberry and pink pepper are the main scents, with notes of bamboo, pink peony, rose, vanilla and sandalwood.

SO MANY ADULT COLOURING BOOKS! I think my mum knows I like them haha. I want to collect all of the colouring books by Millie Marotta because they are just so beautiful. The Game of Thrones colouring book is amazing! I thought it would be filled with scenes and characters that resemble the TV show, but the illustrations are actually the artist's interpretation which I think is so awesome. I like how they've drawn the children of the forest! Each page also contains a quote from the books.

Yayy! New books to read *heart eyed emoji* I can't wait to start them. How cool is this 5 year Q & A Journal? It asks you a different question on every day of the year and then includes a space to answer the question every year for the next few years to see how your answers may have changed. I love the idea of these and I'm glad I now have my own to start in the New Year.

Who doesn't love new PJs and cute socks? The PJs are nice and love primark, but a lion cub with leopard print pants? It's like pairing zebra print pants with a horse themed top haha the animal nerd in me doesn't like that :D but of course, I'll still be wearing them :) & BUNNY SOCKS! ♥

This gorgeous Tsum Tsum stationary was one of the first things I asked for. As soon as I saw an advert announcing the new range in Wilkinsons, I was so excited! I can't believe my mum bought me so much of it. I'm over the moon about it. I also adore this beautiful cupcake recipe book. I love the design of the book: the little cupcake tabs and the fantastic photographs inside.

I got lots of awesome stationary. Yes, I'm 23 years old and yes, I asked for the Moshi Monsters doodle book! :) My niece got one earlier in the year for her birthday and my mum remembered that I'd said how fun it looked and that I wanted one! It's about time that I learnt how to use makeup brushes so I asked for some simple ones to start with. I got some of those Lindt orange chocolates and they are so amazingly delicious! I'll probably have eaten them all by tonight.

I think this has to be one of the best presents I received! 'Feeling Philoslothical' XD it makes me smile everytime I look at it. Plus, its so bloody cute! That's the majority of my Christmas presents :) I've been so lucky this year! I'm just waiting for a smashbook in the post and I also got an Etsy gift card, too. Thankyou for reading! I hope you all enjoyed this post.

Heya Everyone! I hope you had a fantastic day and that Santa brought you all some awesome presents! I love reading about what others do on Christmas Day so I thought I'd do a quick post about what I did before I head off to bed. I'm exhausted! Had a fun day, ate lots of yummy food and received lovely presents ♥

I was woken up at 7am just like every year, which I'm not very happy about at the time haha I don't sleep very well so I've usually only had a few hours sleep by that time. Even though we've all grown up, we have to get up early because for years now my sister has popped around to one of our neighbour's houses to celebrate Christmas morning with the little boy she used to babysit. We get up early so we can open all our presents together before she leaves.

I was delighted with all of the gifts I was given this year. They are so great! I was really happy as soon as I spotted that my mum had bought the Disney Tsum Tsum gift bag that I'd wanted so much!. Tomorrow, I'll be writing a post showing you some of my presents so for now, I'll just tell you a few of my favourites :) I got lots of Tsum Tsum stationary, all of which is absolutely adorable. My mum also bought me a massive jar and filled with loads of pick 'n' mix sweets! I got the Disney Alice in Wonderland vans that I'd asked for and I can't wait to wear them. What was your favourite Christmas present?

After opening my presents, having some breakfast and listening to Christmas songs on TV, I went for a nice relaxin' bath. If you follow me on instagram, I'll have seen that I used my Lush butter bear bathbomb. It was interesting that it was filled with little bits that floated around the bath and it smelt nice. I also decided to use some of my Peeping Santa bubble bar (also from Lush). How cute is it!? I almost decided not to use it because I didn't want to break him up. This was the first bubble bar that I've used and next time, I think I'll chop them up before going for my bath because I had a little dilemma when trying to break off a bit of the Santa. I managed to make it sort of explode everywhere! Bits of red sent flying all over the bathroom :D But after that, I really enjoyed having a red bath that smelt like strawberries.

I spent the rest of the afternoon munching on some of the chocolate I'd received from my family and watching movies on Film 4. I'm a massive fan of Studio Ghibli movies and at this time of year, Film 4 shows lots of their movies which is fantastic! I love that they sometimes air the Japanese version of the movie with subtitles because I prefer watching them in Japanese :) Do you like Ghibli movies? Today, they showed Howl's Moving Castle. I also watched School of Rock later in the day. Before writing this post, I watched the last ever episode of Downton Abbey!! I can't believe it's over and I was a emotional wreck throughout the entire show. I won't say anymore as some of you may have been too busy to watch it tonight and I don't want to spoil it for ya. I wish it could have gone on forever, or at least a little while longer!

It's not very often that I actually like many of the selfies I take so I was really happy when I took these photos and felt confident about the way I looked. I'm wearing Rimmel's Starry Eyed 128 lipstick, which matched the Burgundy dress I was wearing. I wore my lovely christmas jumper too for most of the day.

My bunnies enjoyed gnawing and attempting to destroy their Christmas presents! I decided not to give my rabbits the chocolates from their advent calendars for the last couple of days so I'd have enough to give them all a few each. I wish I had some photos of my bunnies with their presents but it started raining not long after I'd gone outside :( It's such a shame because I also wanted to take my annual Christmas themed rabbit photos. My rabbits are in for a treat tomorrow when they get all the carrots and brussel sprout bits from Christmas dinner.

Here's my Christmas dinner. It was so delicious! I also had some trifle for dessert :) I can't wait for tomorrow's food. I know a lot of people traditionally have a Christmas Eve buffet but we've always had ours on Boxing Day and I'm really looking forward to it. Do you have a buffet around Christmas time? Do you have yours on Christmas Eve or Boxing Day?

Before I end this post, I wanted to show off the gingerbread house that I made yesterday. I didn't bake the gingerbread from scratch... I purchased one of those 'build your own' sets, and I'm really quite proud of my finished house. It's so colourful!

Friday, 25 December 2015

I had the Christmas tag written on my little list of festive blog post ideas and really wanted to do it, so finally here it is! Merry Christmas Everyone.... I hope you are all have a wonderful day! Only one more sleep now! Instead of tagging people to answer, I'm just going to invite anyone of my lovely readers to answer the tag if you want to. Please let me know if you do... I love reading these kinds of posts.

We open our presents on Christmas morning. My mum Father Christmas always puts mine & my siblings presents in the same place in neat piles every year so we know where to find them. I love Christmas morning! I love the moment of walking into the living room and seeing all the presents with the light of the Christmas tree making the shiny wrapping paper twinkle and being able to smell the turkey cooking in the oven.

(3) Do you have a favourite Christmas memory?

The majority of my favourite memories from childhood involve when I received awesome presents. I remember how happy I was when I got my Playstation 1 for Christmas when I was 8 years old and some of the good old classic games like Rayman, Crash Bandicoot and Spyro. I'll never get bored of playing those games, they are still amazing!

(4) Favourite festive food?

I love all festive food! Sunday roast is one of my favourite meals and Christmas dinner is like a bigger, more awesome version of that so I always clean my plate. If I had to choose a favourite though, it would definitely be pigs-in-blankets. They are so yummy!

(5) Favourite Christmas gift?

I kind of answered this for Q3 but I have lots of favourite Christmas gift memories from when I was little. Another that I'll never forget is a cassette tape (haha how times have changed!) I got that was personalised. It had a song on it called 'Coco's Christmas Cracker' that was all about an Elf and then when you turned the tape around, there was another song on there that sang 'Merry Christmas Sarah'. I was so fastinated that it knew my name! I loved it! I was 5 years old when I got it and I still remember all the words to both songs ♥

(6) Favourite Christmas Scent?

The smell of the food cooking in the oven, especially the turkey. As for candles, this year I LOVE the 'Berry Trifle' and 'Snowflake Cookie' Yankee Candles.

(7) Do you have any Christmas Eve traditions?

We don't have any Christmas Eve traditions. My family & I just usually spend the evening watching Christmas movies on TV or listening to Christmas songs whilst wrapping some last minute Christmas presents and munching chocolates.

(8) What tops your tree?

For the last few years we had a pretty little Christmas fairy to match our then white tree, but this year since we have red & gold decorations we've used an older tree topper. It's an angel dressed in red with gold wings and covered in gold stars.

(9) As a kid what was the one (crazy, wild, extravagant) gift you always asked for but never received?

I don't remember if I ever asked for something extravagant for Christmas, but I aways remember asking for a pet, especially a dog. I really wanted a dog growing up! I can't wait until I have my own home so I can get a dog (or five) :)

(10) What's the best part of Christmas for you?

I love watching my loved ones opening the presents that I've bought for them. In fact I just love watching them open any presents, the look of joy on their faces and seeing them smile.

Thursday, 24 December 2015

I'm in such an excited mood right now! I cannot wait for tomorrow! I'm also making my gingerbread house later today so I'm really looking forward to that even though it was really difficult last year to get the walls of the house to stick together and I'm not the best at putting together things that require accuracy so it took a long time to complete it, but at the end I get to decorate it and that's the best part. For today's blogmas I'm going to show you the adorable Strawberry Santas that I made yesterday evening. I was inspired to make them because of this year's Aldi Christmas advert and I love the way they turned out (even if they are a little messy!).

They were really easy to make and will look great sitting on the table with the rest of your Christmas food. The original recipes all include cream cheese but I don't like cheese (unless it's red leicester, which is the only cheese I'll eat other than Walkers cheese & onion and Wotsits crisps. I'm a very fussy eater!) so I tweaked the recipe to suite me. Here is a link to the proper recipe :) This is what I used to make my little strawberry santas...

To make each of my Santa's, I used large strawberries and whipping cream. I chopped the green tops off and then cut the strawberries so that I would have one part for the body and a pointed part for the hat. Then I simply whipped the creamed using an electric whisk and using a spoon placed a blob of cream on top of one half of the strawberry, sat the hat part on top and then added a tiny bit of cream to the top of the hat. I also attempted to use the cream to make buttons on the Santa's but as you can see from my photo, I didn't do a very good job of that but I'm sure you'll all be much neater than me when making your own haha :) Finally, I popped 2 chocolate chips into the cream to make eyes, and when I'd completed all of my strawberries I sprinkled some icing sugar over them to look like snow.

Wednesday, 23 December 2015

As promised, today's blogmas is going to be another baking-themed post. I've been really in the mood to bake lately, probably because of all the Christmas food adverts that have been on TV. I've been excited for Christmas dinner all week! And, the buffet we have every Boxing Day. So much food! Today, I made shortbread biscuits and of course I decorated them all Christmassy.

Here are my finished biscuits! I used some of the left over cake decorations from making yesterday's Christmas cupcakesand some blue fondant icing. I attempted to hand-draw some snowflakes, too and although they are rather messy, I still love how they look. Do you want to have a go at making your own Christmas shortbread? Here's what you'll need:

For the shortbread biscuits

125g butter

180g plain flour

55g caster sugar

(optional) a few drops of vanilla flavouring

For the decoration

You can decorate your biscuits however you like but this is what I used :)

(3) Next, stir in the flour and keep mixing until you have a crumbly mixture

(4) Now you can knead the mixture together into a ball ready to roll

(5) Sprinkle some flour onto the surface you are about to roll out your dough on to prevent it from sticking, as well as the rolling pin too.

(6) Roll out the dough until it's around 1 & a half cm thick and cut out any shaped biscuits you want

( I wanted circular biscuits but didn't have a cookie cutter so I used a glass. I really need to buy a circular cutter! haha I did however have a heart cookie cutter so I used the last bit of dough to make 2 little heart biscuits).

(7) Grease a baking tray and place on the biscuits ready to pop into the oven.

The recipe I was following (find it here) said to put the biscuits into a fridge for 20 minutes before baking but since the other recipes I had a peep at didn't include this step, I decided to just bake my biscuits straight away.

(8) Bake your biscuits until they are light golden brown, for 15-20 minutes.

How I decorated my shortbread biscuits

For the icing covered biscuits, place the icing sugar into a mixing bowl and gradually mix in 15ml of warm water, adding a little bit each time and stirring. It says on the box that you may have to add more water and I did have to use more, I used around 30ml altogether. Then simply, spread the icing sugar on top of your biscuits and add any decorations you want.

For the blue snowflake biscuits, I used ready-to-roll fondant icing. Sprinkle a little icing sugar (or you could use flour if you don't have any icing sugar) to stop it sticking to the surface and roll out as you did with the shortbread dough for the biscuit preparation. Then, use cookie cutters to cut shapes out of the fondant. I used the same glass I used to cut out my circular biscuits so that the icing would fit perfectly on top. I then decided to make another batch of icing sugar and using a knife, draw a snowflake onto four of my biscuits.

Here are some close up photos of my shortbread biscuits ♥

Just after taking these photos, I couldn't resist eating one of the snowflake biscuits. It was delicious!

Tuesday, 22 December 2015

I had a fun afternoon doing some festive baking. For blogmas day 4, I made gingerbread men which were really yummy and would make great homemade Christmas presents for your loved ones. Over the last couple of weeks each time my mum went shopping and spotted some Christmassy cake decorations, she bought them for me so today I finally decided to use them and baked some cupcakes with the help of my niece.

For the cupcakes, I used a simple fairy cake/cupcake recipe and I topped them with buttercream. Here's what you'll need:

For the cake

100g self-raising flour

100g margarine

100g caster sugar

2 medium eggs

Don't forget to buy paper cases

For the buttercream

100g icing sugar

50g butter or margarine

(optional) flavourings

(optional) food colouring

.... I used red food colouring for a few of mine :)

& cake decorations! There are some lovely toppings available for Christmas♥

To begin with, set the oven to 180ºC / Gas Mark 4 and pre-heat whilst you are preparing your cake mixture. First, mix the butter and caster sugar together until you have a light and fluffy mixture. Then, slowly fold the egg and flour into the mixture by adding a little bit at a time and mixing until you have a creamy mixture. Spoon the mixture into the paper cases and pop into the oven for 15 minutes.

Once the cupcakes have been given time to cool, you can make the buttercream. Mix the icing sugar and butter/margarine together until it's creamy and add any flavourings or colourings you want. Now, it's time to decorate them. My favourite part! :) My niece also really enjoyed decorating her cupcakes and wanted to give them to her parents for Christmas. Whilst we were adding the toppings to our cakes, my other niece and nephew came over to give us all Christmas cards and so they joined in, too.

How adorable is this little Christmas tray? It's from Home Bargains. The cake decorations next to it includes 5 different toppings. The green one is gorgeous! It looks like glitter :) They were from B&M Bargains.

These tubes of cake decorations are so cute with the santa & elf cartoon designs. The middle tube is filled with little white & red candy canes. They are also from Home Bargains. I love all the Christmassy things you can buy there! On the right side of the photo, you can see some little cake toppers. The pack from B&M Bargains contains penguins, snowmen and more.

Ta-Dah! Here are our finished cupcakes ♥ I decided to pour a mixture of all the cake toppings into a bowl and dip the cupcakes in to cover them because trying to sprinkle the decorations on top was messy; they went everywhere! I think they look really festive and cute, and my family loved them.

Thanks for reading! Tomorrow I'll be doing some more festive baking.

♥

Have you done anyfestive baking this year? If so, please link me :) I'd love to have a read.

On the days leading up to Christmas I'm getting more and more busy, which is making posting everyday for blogmas a challenge. Yesterday, I was feeling really under the weather and after having a few stressful days, it had really taken it's toll on my health. I was having a bad flare up and was in pain for most of the day, and with Sunday being a tiring day anyway because my family all come over for Sunday dinner, I decided to catch up on reading blog posts and in the evening, to relax and watching TV. Today's blogmas post is going to be about the Christmas decorations that I've put up in my bedroom this year to make it feel more festive and keep me in a Christmassy mood. I haven't got many up but I wanted to share some photographs with you anyhow :) I hope you all enjoy!

How pretty is this snowflake garland? It reminds me of Disney's Frozen and it perfectly matches the blue and cream wallpaper on one of the walls of my bedroom. I got it from The Works.

I picked up these two Christmassy wall decorations from a local pound store and I love how bright and colourful they are. It's also awesome that they have 3D details and lots of glitter!

I purchased this festive bunting today when I was out shopping and it's so adorable! I would have got a photograph of the whole bunting but my room was so messy haha each little triangle has a different character on; my favourite is the snowman ♥ I wish it would snow this year!

After seeing an alpacasso Christmas tree the other day, I really wanted to put this little alpacasso in my mini tree to add a little kawaii touch. My other decorations include a pack of multi-coloured 'Nordic' style baubles from B&M Bargains, some lovely wooden reindeers from The Works, mini multi-coloured tree lights that my mum got me from a pound shop and a few of the old decorations that we've had for years.

I love this gingerbread man! I bought him last year to hang up in my room at uni and I thought he'd look fantastic on top of my tree! He's so adorable!

Here is a full view of my mini tree looking very messy! Who else has a mini tree?

Hello Everyone! I'm Sarah, I'm 27 and I'm from a small town in Lancashire, in the North West of England. Raiin Monkey is a lifestyle blog, and I share posts about the things I love, such as stationery, nature, collectable toys & photography. I also blog about life as a spoonie, living with mental & physical health conditions. I'm an intersectional feminist,alternative, plus-size introvert, who is obsessed with all things kawaii ♥